Collins, J. Thomas, G., Willis, R. & Wilsdon, J. (2004) - Carrots, Sticks and Sermons. Demos, London.

Carrots, sticks and sermons:
influencing public behaviour for

environmental goals

A Demos/Green Alliance report
produced for Defra

Version 4.0, 16/12/03

Joanna Collins, Gillian Thomas,
Rebecca Willis & James Wilsdon

rwillis@green-alliance.org.uk
020 7233 7433
james@demos.co.uk
020 7401 5335

Contents
Page

Acknowledgements 2
Page 1

Introduction 3

1. Influencing public behaviour: a beginners guide 5

2. Public behaviour and the environment 15

3. Case studies 24

3.1 Environmental awareness campaigns
3.2 Plastic bags
3.3 Five a day

4. Seven steps towards successful influencing 44

Appendix 1: a timeline of public influencing strategies 51

Appendix 2: Bibliography 54

Carrots, sticks and sermons: influencing public behaviour for environmental goals

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to all those who assisted with the research process, through
interviews and written comments; and to participants in the October 2003
seminar, who shared their views with us.
Page 2

Particular thanks to David Hall, whose advice and insights into the
advertising industry were invaluable.

Thanks also to John Manoochehri, who undertook an initial review of the
literature.


Introduction

Defras success as a government department depends in part on its ability to
influence people to change their views and behaviour. For example, success
in waste policy depends on successfully encouraging people to sort their
waste for recycling, and to re-use or minimise waste wherever possible; and
energy efficiency targets will not be reached unless each household
contributes. This influencing role is tricky for government, as it is indirect,
and relies on a sophisticated understanding of peoples motivations and
behaviour.
Page 3

There are several ways in which a department such as Defra can influence
people to achieve government goals:

1) Legislation, such as product standards or bans on harmful chemicals;
2) Economic instruments which alter the price of products or services to
make it cheaper to protect the environment, and more expensive to
pollute it such as reducing VAT on energy efficient products;
3) Provision of information, so that people can make an informed
choice such as ecolabelling schemes and the tractor mark for
British food;
4) Marketing and influencing strategies, which aim to win hearts and
minds so that the right behaviour follows - such as the are you doing
your bit advertising and awareness campaign.

In reality, when dealing with a complex policy area, a combination of each
of these approaches will be necessary. This report looks at how the last two
measures provision of information, and marketing and influencing
strategies, can help Defra achieve its environmental goals.

Influencing the public is as much an art as it is a science, and experienced
marketers know that what works in one instance may well fail in another.
The report identifies current thinking and best practice in the art of public
influencing. It aims to assist Defra in identifying and incorporating a
broader set of cultural, psychological and social factors into the
development, communication and delivery of policy.

There is no magic bullet in this area; no secret formula for success. But a lot
can be drawn from the latest thinking and best practice in the UK and
further afield, and then used to inform and shape strategies to good effect.


Report structure

In chapter one, we review how thinking about public influencing has
developed over time, and look at the private sector to see what lessons
government could learn from commercial marketing techniques. We then
examine the role of government in public influencing, and discuss successes
and failures to date.
Page 4

Chapter two focuses on public behaviour and the environment. It highlights
the main hurdles in applying public influencing to environmental goals
translating complex problems into everyday solutions; moving from
awareness into action; and reaching beyond the committed core of
concerned citizens.

Our case studies focus on three examples of public influencing:
environmental awareness campaigns in the UK and Scotland; strategies to
reduce plastic bag use; and the five-a-day campaign which encourages
people to increase their consumption of fruit and vegetables. Based on
interviews with the people who designed and implemented these strategies,
the case studies draw out lessons for Defra in designing future approaches.
Each looks at a particular aspect of influencing behaviour: the are you doing
your bit? case study examines the difficulties of translating awareness into
action; the plastic bags example discusses how influencing can sit alongside
other policy measures; and the five-a-day example looks at how other
sectors, including the voluntary and commercial sector, can work with
government to achieve a common aim.

Next, we put forward seven steps toward successful influencing. Based on
findings from the literature review and the case studies, these seven steps
outline the issues that Defra needs to consider when drawing up strategies
for public influencing.

This report, and in particular the seven steps, were be discussed at a
workshop for Defra officials, to held in October 2003. The final section of
the report applies the seven steps to existing challenges that the
Department faces, in public influencing on waste issues, climate change and
sustainable development communications.


1. Influencing public behaviour: a beginners guide

Page 5

Public opinion is a relatively young concept. The phrase was first coined in
1781, but a view of public opinion and behaviour as entities that could be
shaped only came about with the rise of mass communications in the late
19
th
century. In recent decades, the challenge of how to influence public
opinion and behaviour, has occupied politicians, policymakers and social
theorists, and has become the defining question of the advertising industry.
Numerous policy objectives from reducing smoking and curbing obesity,
through to promoting personal savings or energy efficiency rely heavily on
successful influencing strategies.

Government efforts to change behaviour started in earnest in wartime, with
memorable appeals to Dig for Victory or dire warnings that careless talk
costs lives. These forms of communication, which secured a place in the
public imagination, are the direct predecessors of more recent campaigns,
such as those addressing drink-driving and AIDS. It is only in the past 10-15
years that government has started trying to measure systematically the
effects of such campaigns on actual behaviour, and this task remains
difficult, especially when information campaigns are accompanied by other
policy measures.

Compare this with the much longer history of attempts at changing
behaviour through laws or markets. The rule of law has been developed and
improved over millennia; economics has enjoyed 300 years of intensive
development. By contrast, the art of directly influencing public behaviour,
through soft measures such as advertising and public information, is still
relatively underdeveloped.

Social changes over the past thirty years have also cast doubt on the idea of
public opinion as homogenous and readily identified. People are now
acknowledged to exhibit a far greater diversity of individual motivations,
beliefs and behaviours. Tom Bentley sums up this trend: As societies have
become more diverse, more complex and more open, the range of issues and
social groupings has become far harder to corral into coherent policy
platforms or voter coalitions
1

The media is also changing. Traditional mass channels such as newspapers
and television are diversifying and facing competition from new media and

1
Bentley, T. (2001) Its Democracy Stupid, London, Demos, p.5.

Page 6

peer-to-peer networks. New forms of communication such as email and
mobile phones made it easier to maintain extended networks of
acquaintances, which often become the anchors of identity and behaviour.
This encourages a trend whereby porous social networks (instead of
membership of large social groups) become the primary arbiters of
behaviour. As Andrew Curry argues:

Peoples trust is migrating towards my world group and away from
sources of authority. So what we will end up with is people in those
my world groups acting as gatekeepers, where trust is formed
around word of mouth
2

These trends do not sit well with conventional notions of public opinion and
behaviour, capable of being shaped and manipulated through the mass
media. A more diverse public makes the mobilisation of public opinion
more difficult, but it also makes the use of softer influencing techniques
more essential, as traditional policy tools struggle to adapt to the
complexities of modern society.

Methods of researching public opinion

Opinion polling is the quick, and some would say crude, route to
understanding public opinion. In the past decade, following the serious
polling errors in the run-up to the 1992 general election, the accuracy of
polling has improved dramatically. Yet it remains limited in its ability to
offer a useful picture of issues outside the formal political arena. Currently
there are only a few large-sample, many-question surveys (such as
Environics Internationals yearly International Environmental Monitor)
which can give a broader picture of what people think about complex issues
such as the environment, and what they will do about it. And even then,
such polls provide at best a fragile impression.

An alternative approach to assessing public opinion and behaviour is
consumer preference theory, which assumes that public attitudes are
reflected in product preference and purchase patterns. Analysis of this has
flowed from both sides of the political spectrum, in the work of theorists
such as Gary Becker and Joseph Stiglitz, and in the socio-psychological
analysis of researchers such as Elizabeth Shove and Juliet Schor.

2
Andrew Curry quoted in Harkin, J. (2003) Mobilisation, London, Demos, p.25

Page 7

Both research fields are starting to develop crossover methods, which
recognise that some issues need to be analysed in more nuanced terms than
will people buy it? or will they vote for it?. In the research fields between
public opinion theory and consumer analysis, new data-gathering methods
are being pioneered, which are more reliant on research at small group level.

New research of this sort tends to be more user-centric. For example, in
the German ULYSSES project, which looked at climate change, small groups
of citizens shared a moderated discussion on the risks of climate change and
options for policy. The groups met five times and the range of arguments
expressed was then condensed and given to policy makers. Such research
can often itself contribute to changes in the opinions and willingness-to-act
of the subjects, so it can offer the best insights into how to convert opinion
into actual behaviour change.
3

Changing consumption: lessons from the commercial sector

Theories of consumer preference used to be based on a linear model of
behaviour known as AIDA (attention, interest, desire, and action).
According to this model, consumers first become aware of a product; it must
get their attention. Once it has their attention, they may become interested
in what it has to offer. Consumers then want the product the desire is
created and this is followed by the action or purchase of the product.

In reality, it is rarely this straightforward. Marketing expert Wendy Gordon
points to the opportunistic purchasing behaviour of individuals,
highlighting a gap between what people say they want, and what they
actually buy when faced with the moment of truth about what to put in the
shopping trolley.
4
Purchasing decisions are rarely rational and linear, and
are more often opportunistic and emotional impulses, based on cultural
cues and wider trends.

In the past twenty years, marketing theory has changed to reflect this. There
is now a growing focus on brand, and the need to create an identity that
resonates with the consumer. Straightforward advertising as information
provision the first step in the AIDA model is long gone, and has been
replaced with more sophisticated campaigns.

3
Jaeger, Shackley, Darer, Waterton, 1997. Towards a Polylogue on Climate Change and Global
Modelling, http://www.zit.tu-darmstadt.de/ulysses/ewp97-3.pdf
4
Gordon, W. (2002). Brand green: Mainstream or forever niche? London, Green Alliance.

Page 8

For advertisers keen to appeal to a new generation it is common to use
techniques that are deliberately pastiche, or which involve innovative or
viral marketing models. For example, the UK advertising agency Cake
specialises in street level stunts, and recently painted a whole street red to
celebrate Barbies 40
th
birthday. The aim of these techniques is to create a
word of mouth buzz, which can often be more effective than the scatter-
gun effects of TV advertising.
5
There is also great interest in the marketing
community in using original content, such as films and soap operas, as
vehicles for advertising. This had led to a rise in sponsorship of particular
programmes (for example Volvos sponsorship of ER or Npowers of The
Bill), a process which will develop further in the next few years, as
advertisers start to influence the actual content of programmes (for example,
a holiday show made in association with, and including prizes from, a
leading travel firm).

However, as marketing techniques become ever more sophisticated, so the
huge environmental problems inherent in over-consumption have also
become more apparent. The need for more sustainable patterns of
production and consumption has been identified as a priority at both the
Rio (1992) and the Johannesburg (2002) Earth Summits, and the UK
government recently published a sustainable consumption and production
strategy, which outlines a policy framework for tackling these challenges.
6

The question remains whether, as part of such a strategy, policymakers can
co-opt the techniques used so effectively in the marketing of consumer
goods to achieve environmental and social, alongside commercial goals.

Expert or facilitator? Governments role in public persuasion

Governments ability to influence behaviour relies heavily on public trust
and confidence in the messages that it sends out. However, this trust can no
longer be taken for granted. In her 2002 Reith Lectures, Onora ONeill
describes how a trust deficit now cuts across almost every aspect of
contemporary British society. Mistrust, argues Professor ONeill, is now
directed not just at crooks and wide boys. [It] has spread across all areas
of life, and supposedly with good reason. Citizens, it is said, no longer trust
governments, or politicians, or ministers, or the police, or the courts, or the

5
Harkin, J. (2001). Brand Name Bullies Fight Back with Greenwashed PR, New Statesman
6
Defra/DTI (2003) Changing Patterns: UK Government Framework for Sustainable Consumption and
Production, www.defra.gov.uk/environment/business/scp


prison service.None of us, it is said, trusts banks, or insurers, or pension
providers. Patients, it is said, no longer trust doctors, and in particular no
longer trust hospitals or hospital consultants.
7

Page 9

Her argument is backed by polling data from MORI, which shows that some
authority figures such as police and civil servants are trusted by only half of
the population, while politicians command the trust of less than a quarter of
their electorate. Overall, the latest MORI research concludes that: Trust in
the Government is low, with only a quarter to a third of us believing that the
Government is acting in the public interest...
8

The growth in the use of spin in political communication has further
undermined trust in government. Various communication fiascos, such as
the Jo Moore/Martin Sixsmith affair and more recently the Iraq/dodgy
dossier row have contributed to an overall impression that government
cannot be trusted. This problem formed part of the focus of a recent study
by the Government Communication Review Group, chaired by Bob Phyllis.
A Demos submission to this group argued that the aim of government
communication should be to open up public debate, not close down
alternative perspectives:

The current government has discovered that overuse of tactical
communication techniques not only reduces their effectiveness, but
makes public participation in debate less likelyPost-spin
communication is not straight or neutral communication, but
communication which acknowledges multiple viewpoints, multiple
sources of information, and the fact that public opinion is not fixed
and cannot therefore be won.
9

Trust is not the only factor which impacts on a governments ability to
influence public behaviour. Perceptions of how responsive the political
system is also determine the levels of public engagement in political debate
and action. As Frank Fischer, amongst others, has pointed out, the advent of
new forms of environmental risk has highlighted the limitations of
traditional models of democracy.
10
More innovative forms of public
participation are often necessary to cope with the complexities of

7
ONeill, O. (2002) A Question of Trust, Cambridge University Press
8
http://www.mori.com/polls/2002/uea.shtml
9
Gibb, E. (2003). Publicity: From persuasion to participation. London, Demos.
10
Fischer, F. (2002). Citizens, Experts and the Environment Durham, USA, Duke University Press.

contemporary environmental issues, such as the pros and cons of GM crops,
or the use of incineration for waste disposal.

Page 10

For environmental problems which are characterised by risk and
uncertainty, open and participatory models of communications between
citizens and experts have proved particularly effective. The Global
Environmental Change Programme of the ESRC has developed
recommendations for how governments should cope with situations of
uncertainty and declining public confidence. Commenting on conventional
attempts by governments to steer public opinion, the GECP authors argue
that:

Better institutions and more scientific knowledge are not the only
essentials for rebuilding trust. Above all, openness about risks and
uncertainties is called for.
There is an urgent need for more deliberative policy processes that
encourage greater legitimacy, transparency and public ownership,
thereby generating greater trust in outcomes.

They propose the following methods of building public trust:

Integrating perspectives: ensuring that input comes from a wide
variety of expert and non-expert sources (which includes the need to
cross-check supposedly hard data).
Interactive research: the user-centric methods described above,
which encourage people to form and reformulate their opinions
interactively, consensually and consciously.
New ways to make decisions: interactive research ought to be
accompanied by a commitment to allow the public a meaningful role
in decisions and their implementation.
11

Attempts to adopt these practices are still experimental. The recent GM
Nation? government-backed consultation exercise is perhaps the most
significant innovation in this area so far, though even this has been criticised
for not being sufficiently linked to policy decisions.

11
ESRC Global Environmental Change Programme (2000) Risky choices, soft disasters: environmental
decision-making under uncertainty, www.gecko.ac.uk


Successes and failures in government influencing techniques

The first serious attempts by government to influence public behaviour were
wartime propaganda messages. These were based on a top-down, expert-led
model in which government imparted information and made clear the type
of behaviour it expected from the public. Such campaigns often demanded
personal sacrifice or behaviour-change, for the sake of the greater good.
12

But their applicability outside wartime, or a situation of serious societal
upheaval, is limited.
Page 11

In recent decades, the focus has shifted to public education campaigns.
These normally present behaviour changes as a way for individuals to
improve their own lives, for example by driving more safely or adopting
healthier lifestyles. Government campaigns can also be used to break taboos
and challenge perceptions, as seen in recent campaigns to promote the
employment of disabled people, or to highlight the problem of domestic
violence.

Some of these campaigns have been huge successes. These include the high
profile campaigns against drink-driving and smoking. Yet even here it can
be difficult to isolate the effects of government campaigns from wider policy
impacts, such as higher taxes on cigarettes, or stricter legal penalties for
drink driving.

Smoking in the USA: the longest running public education campaign

In the US, after decades of anti-smoking campaigns, the Surgeon-General
dedicated his 2000 report to a comprehensive review of anti-smoking methods. His
conclusion supports a comprehensive approach to anti-smoking, which includes
the following instruments:

- Educational strategies, conducted in conjunction with community groups and the
media;
- Pharmacological treatment of nicotine addiction, combined with behavioural -
support (such as physicians advising their patients to quit smoking);

12
These techniques were based on the work of Walter Lippmann and Edwin Bernays, theorists in
public control by mass communication techniques. See Lippmann, Public Opinion, 1922; and Bernays,
Propaganda, 1928. Bernays was involved with the Committee for Public Information which
coordinated US propaganda in the First World War.

- Regulation, including controls on advertising and promotion and clean indoor air
regulations;
- Taxation at optimal levels on tobacco products;
- Community interventions, which require the involvement of schools, health
agencies, city and county governments, and other social and recreational
organizations.
Page 12

Despite the fact that the anti-smoking drive in the US is probably the longest-
running, best-funded public behaviour influence campaign ever, the Surgeon-
General is realistic about how measurable the dynamics of policy packages really
are: The available approaches to reducing tobacco useeducational, clinical,
regulatory, economic, and comprehensivediffer substantially in their techniques
and in the metric by which success can be measured. A hierarchy of effectiveness is
difficult to construct.
13

There are lower profile but equally effective examples, such as the campaign
for smoke alarms, which has led to an increase from 18 % to 75% in the
number of homes which are fitted with alarms. This campaign is interesting
in that it combined TV advertising with retailer promotions and a fitting
service available free from the fire service. NGOs and campaigning bodies
have also enjoyed some success in using the public education model to shift
consumption patterns around unethical goods, such as fur or battery eggs.

Overall, the evidence for why particular campaigns succeed is patchy. The
UK Health Development Agency has reviewed the effectiveness of
government health promotion work, and concluded that there is no single
template for behaviour-related interventions, nor an agreed formula for
success.
14

Learning from failures is potentially more instructive. It is significant that
the campaigns that have struggled the most appear to share some
characteristics. They tend to be psychologically complex (such as ending
addiction), or targeted at relatively private spheres of activity or at peer
networks. For example, government has actively promoted the anti-drugs
message for decades, but by the age of 18 nearly a third of young people are
still using cannabis regularly.
15
Similarly, messages about contraception and
sexual health have been consistently circulated since the 1960s, but the UK

13
Reducing Tobacco Use: a Report of the Surgeon General. US Department of Health and Human
Services, 2000. http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/sgr_tobacco_use.htm
14
http://www.hda-online.org.uk/html/research/effectiveness.htm
15
Bradshaw, J. The Wellbeing of Children in the UK, 2002, Save the Children. P301

still has the highest rate of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases
among 13-15 year olds in Europe.
16

Page 13

The mixed success of public education campaigns echoes the experience of
business. Lord Leverhulme, the founder of Unilever, famously complained:
I know that 50% of the money I spend on advertising is wasted,
unfortunately I can never find out which half ... Despite occasional gripes
about the cost, few business leaders would deny the value of advertising.
Research shows that, over the long term, brands which are consistently
advertised can weather the economic cycle more effectively than non-
advertised alternatives.
17

Public behaviour as a complex system

Arguably, the underlying problem with many efforts at public influencing is
that they are still reliant on an outdated model of governments relationship
with citizens and consumers. The expert-led, command-and-control
approach to public influencing which came to the fore in wartime
propaganda, and persisted in public awareness campaigns until the 1970s
and 1980s, is no longer adequate for the complex, diverse and individualised
society of 2003. Defras strategy for Sustainable Production and
Consumption acknowledges this challenge: policy intervention is fraught
with difficulty, made harder by the complex nature of the market and the
often close relationship between, and motivations of, producers and
consumers.
18

Demos has argued for some time that the conceptual models which
underpin public policymaking have much to learn from systems thinking.
19

This argument can be applied with equal force to the task of influencing
public behaviour. Conventional approaches attempt to break a task down
into its component parts and tackle them in a rational, linear manner. The
mechanistic logic at work is reflected in the language used policy levers,
instruments etc and there is an assumption that interventions can be made
at a certain point in order to produce a planned and controlled outcome.

16
Meyrick, J. Harris, R. 1994, Adolescent sexual behaviour, contraceptive use and pregnancy: a
review ACPP Review and Newsletter Vol 16 No 5
17
Buck, S. (2002) The True Cost of Cutting Adspend. Oxford, World Advertising Research Centre.
18
Defra/DTI (2003) Changing Patterns: UK Government Framework for Sustainable Consumption and
Production, www.defra.gov.uk/environment/business/scp, p.25
19
See for example, Chapman, J. (2002) System Failure: why governments must learn to think
differently, London, Demos; Bentley, T. (2002) Letting Go: complexity, individualism and the left,
Renewal Vol.10, No.1

Page 14

The reality in most areas of policymaking including this one - is a lot more
complex and messy. Just as consumer preferences do not follow a linear
AIDA pattern, neither does public opinion and behaviour. Attitudes rarely
translate neatly into action or voter preferences. Providing information does
not necessarily change attitudes, and changing attitudes does not necessarily
cause a change in behaviour.

Recognising this complexity does not make the challenge of influencing
behaviour any easier. But it does at least mean that policymakers approach
that challenge with more accurate conceptual models, and are less likely to
come unstuck when a simple, linear theory collides with a more complex
reality.

Alongside a better understanding of the nature of complex systems, we also
need a richer and more sophisticated account of consumer motivation and
behaviour. Tim Jackson of the University of Surrey has done a great deal of
pioneering work in this area. He argues that attempts to influence public
behaviour have often failed because of inadequate theoretical conceptions of
behaviour:

Existing institutional responses have tended to rely on rather
meagre, one-dimensional conceptions of human behaviour, which
turn either on the economic rationality of the individual consumer
or the supposed commodity fetishism of consumer society. Neither
of these responses is unequivocally useful: the former because it
offers little new to existing policies; the latter because it
underestimates the complexity of human motivations and risks
alienating those whose behaviour it seeks to change.
20

Given the immense difficulty of conceptualising human behaviour, it is
hardly surprising that commercial marketing does not attempt to model
behaviour or motivation, instead basing its work on experimentation, hunch
and instinct. Jackson argues that consumer behaviour will continually evade
neat conceptualisation. Understanding it requires a sophisticated model,
which encompasses both individual and social aspects of human
motivation, incorporates both ethical and prudential behaviours, and is
based on credible theories of intention, motivation and agency.

20
Jackson, T. (2003) Mapping Models of Mammon a cross-disciplinary survey of conceptual
approaches to consumer behaviour, Paper to epuk03 Conference, June 2003, www.envpsy.org.uk

Page 15

One potential theoretical model for consumer behaviour that moves some
way towards this is social learning theory. This model concerns itself not so
much with why we consume, but more how behaviour, including consumer
behaviour, spreads through populations. Social learning theory holds that
people change by aligning their behaviour to that of their role models, rather
than by considering their conduct philosophically, or by reading public
education leaflets.

Social learning theory is helpful because it can help us understand why some
ideas and practices spread exponentially with virtually no promotional
activity on the part of government or institutions, whilst other practices
persist stubbornly, despite mass attempts to reduce or eliminate them.

Illustrations of this phenomenon include, for example, the huge post war
decline of consumption of full fat milk, butter and lard in favour of healthier
alternatives, which happened in the absence of any kind of major promotion
on the part of a Health Education Council or similar organisations. On the
other side of the coin, organisations campaigning against smacking, such as
Barnardos and the NSPCC, despite energetic campaigning, continue to fail
to significantly alter public attitudes to smacking with one office for
national statistics poll showing 88% of respondents agreed that it was
sometimes necessary to smack a naughty child, with only 8% disagreeing.
21

Yet we do know that public influencing campaigns can have significant
effects, as the experience with fire alarms, drink driving and smoking have
shown. Social learning theory helps show us how public education
campaigns can help to alter public behaviour - if and when it is integrated
into social networks.

Influencing techniques based on social learning theory have been mostly
applied in situations where behaviour is demonstrably anti-social (e.g.
juvenile delinquency), rather than where consumers are being encouraged to
make modest behavioural changes. Nonetheless, it seems a promising
candidate for wider application to environmental goals.

21
Office for National Statistics, Department of Health Omnibus survey (1998). Interestingly,
childrens rights campaigners argue that other countries which have made physical punishment of
children illegal (such as Sweden) also demonstrated high agreement with smacking in polls, but public
opinion, and behaviour shifted following the legislation

Indeed, the Canadian government has recently attempted this, by producing
a set of guidelines for altering public behaviour around environmental and
health goals, which are grounded in social learning theory. Known as the
Tools of Change, these guidelines encourage individuals and groups to
spread good environmental practices throughout their peer group.
22
The
table below illustrates the main elements of the Tools of Change approach:
Page 16

Planning parameters

Nuts and bolts Multifaceted
approaches
Setting objectives Building motivation over
time
Home visits
Developing partners Providing feedback Mass media
Getting informed Financial incentives and
disincentives
Neighbourhood coaches and
block leaders
Targeting the audience Norm appeals Peer support groups
Choosing tools Obtaining a commitment School programmes that
involve the family
Financing the programme Overcoming specific
barriers
Word-of-mouth
Measuring achievements Vivid, personalized
communications
Work programmes that
influence the home

Spreading the idea virus: influencing behaviour through
networks

Social learning theory teaches us that how marketers connect with
underlying beliefs is important, but so is the mechanism by which a message
spreads. Certain attitudes and sympathies can remain dormant until they are
activated by an idea or practice becoming more visible and public. For
example, some commentators suggest that those who are already recycling
are now waiting for the next set of environmental actions they can take, but
until these opportunities become visible, they are unlikely to be seized.
23

The viral nature of behaviour change has been well described by Malcolm
Gladwell who coined the term tipping point to describe the point at which
an idea or practise is being transmitted to more than one person at each
transaction. He uses it to explain how small, or even imperceptible
alterations in the environment can initiate changes in behaviour. For

22
www.toolsofchange.com
23
Flisi, C. (2001) Strange Bedfellows: Advertising and the Green Consumer, International Herald
Tribune.

example, removing the graffiti from the New York subway could be seen as a
tipping point in the decline of crime in New York.
24

Page 17

Such thinking challenges the billiard ball conceptualisation of public
opinion and behaviour, whereby citizens respond neatly to series of
interventions, as a ball does to a well-placed cue shot. Rather, the process of
influencing becomes much more about managing, cultivating and spreading
change.

Key to this process is identifying the intermediaries or network hubs able to
influence others to change behaviour. Seth Godin, author of Unleashing the
Idea Virus refers to such people as sneezers. He insists that Sneezers are at
the core if any ideavirus. Sneezers are the ones who when they tell ten or
twenty people people believe them.
25

A similar argument is made by the market research company Opinion
Leader Research (OLR) in a recent paper on the new persuaders. OLR
argues that the decline of trust in authority, and an upsurge in media
presenting alternative viewpoints, have made people more likely to turn to
trusted intermediaries to help shape their opinions and behaviour.
26
They
suggest that influence now revolves around the interactions of two
personality types: protagonists and perceivers.

Protagonists are:
Skilled friendship makers and know a wider variety of people;
Skilled at maintaining their friends and acquaintances;
Persuasive people, good at encouraging others to adopt their point of
view;
Good information gatherers, skilled at absorbing information and
news.

Perceivers are:
The majority in any group and society;
More likely to listen to the ideas of others;
Hold onto positive or negative opinions for longer periods of time;
Can make an idea become more powerful by zealously pursuing a
brand or idea.

24
Gladwell, M. (2002) The Tipping Point, London, Abacus
25
Godin, S. (2002) The Idea Virus, New York, Simon and Schuster
26
The New Persuaders (2003) Opinion Leader Research, London

Page 18

For any organisation including government to communicate
successfully, it must influence and engage with protagonists. These are the
people who will ensure that ideas are carried and circulated through the
wider communities.

Moving beyond the marketing literature, there are some rich insights that
can be applied to this discussion from the field of network theory. Network
theory is based on a set of observations that seem to hold true for a large
number of complex systems. These might be computers in a network, cells
in an organism, grains in a pile of sand, electrons in a piece of conducting
material or people walking over a bridge.

It was the mathematician Mitchell Feigenbaum who observed that by
knowing the most basic facts about one system, he could predict what could
and could not happen within one system without detailed information about
it. While less work has been carried out on complex social and
organisational systems, there is good reason to believe that some rules of
network theory hold true for these kinds of systems as well.

Within all networks, the inter-relationships between members are at least as
important as the actual members themselves. Network theory always asks
about the links; what matters in a network is each persons degree of
connectivity, rather than, for example, their status. Rather than asking
people how they feel, or what they do, network theorists are interested in
how they interact.

It follows from the importance attached to inter-relationships that networks
are seen to add up to more than the sum of their parts. Emergence is a term
that has been used to describe networks where low-level rules can translate
cumulatively to higher level sophistication, without any apparent leadership,
direction or co-ordination. A classic example of emergence is that of the ant
colony. The key to a colonys success lies in the fact that each individual ant
does not have to do or indeed understand much. Instead they pay attention
to their neighbours (rather than waiting for orders) to decide what to do
next. As a result, colonies successfully feed and protect themselves, evolving
systems as complex as waste collection and burial sites. In other words, local
information can lead to global wisdom.
27

27
Deborah Gordon, quoted in S. Johnson (2001), Emergence, London, Penguin

How can we map the different parts of a network? In fact, there are only
two key parts nodes and links; it is the way in which they inter-relate that
really makes a difference. Nodes are the number of points in a network.
Links are the connections that join the nodes together. In order to be part of
a network every node needs at least one link.
Page 19

The diagram above is from Paul Barans original paper on the design of the
internet. Each diagram contains identical nodes (stations in his
terminology) but has very different properties because of the arrangement of
the links on the diagram. Barans aim was to design a network capable of
withstanding nuclear attack, one that would remain operational even if a
high proportion of nodes or links were removed at random. The network
configuration most suited to this purpose is the distributed one on the right,
which has a high network resilience: even if 50% of the nodes were removed,
this network would be able to operate.

Network theorists have argued that many human networks more closely
resemble the middle model. Albert-Lazslo and Barabasi argued that this was
due to the rule of preferential attachment the rich get richer effect. Once a
node has slightly greater access to the resources of a network (i.e. a few more
links than other nodes), it becomes an attractive place for a new node
joining the network to connect with, which in turn leads to the well-
connected node gaining an even greater advantage.


Its easy to see the relevance of this theory to human organisation, and to the
challenge of influencing public behaviour. Hubs are people who become the
gathering and sharing point for critical information: Godins sneezers or
OLRs protagonists. These people are critical to keeping the flow of
information going around a network. As in Barans diagram, they have links
to many different people across the network, reflecting the high levels of
trust they command. Hubs often become the main communication channel
between people.
Page 20

For an public influencing strategy to be effective, it has to find a way of
reaching these network hubs or intermediaries. In chapter two, we discuss
how this challenged can be applied to changing public behaviour towards
environmental goals, and explore whether changing environment-related
behaviour presents some unique challenges.

2. Public behaviour and the environment

Page 21

Environmental goals present a tough communications challenge. They are
often based on complex or uncertain science, and they tend to require long-
term, collective actions.

The environment also suffers from a perceived gap between problems and
solutions. In one recent survey, 73% of people said that they were more
aware of environmental problems than of solutions.
28
The social theorist
Ulrich Beck has termed this phenomenon industrial fatalism: citizens are
unable to explain or understand many invisible environmental problems, or
identify their perpetrators. The defence mechanism against such uncertainty
is simply to ignore the problems.
29

The balance between individual and collective benefits is also complicated.
Giving up smoking may be difficult, but there are clear benefits to the
individual in doing so. By contrast, recycling household waste does not
benefit the individual directly, except, perhaps, by generating a general
feelgood factor. Most of the benefit accrues at the collective level

Yet even at the collective level, most people fail to recognise that their
individual actions make a difference. In her recent study of green
consumerism, Wendy Gordon contrasts the circle of concern issues that
worry or concern people - with the circle of influence the ability of the
individual to influence events. Environmental problems are perceived to be
within the circle of concern, but not the circle of influence.
30

Despite the massive surge in awareness over the past fifteen years, the
environment is still far from being a mainstream issue. Politicians and the
media especially the tabloid press - discuss environmental issues only
rarely. It hardly ever features in television dramas or chat shows. As a result,
few people feel a real sense of urgency, or an imperative to take action. Ian
Christie and Diane Warburton describe the invisibility of the environment
in much public discourse: Our politics and media largely fail to give voice

28
Eurobarometer (2002) The attitude of Europeans towards the environment. Brussels, European
Commission
29
Beck, D. (1995) Ecological Politics in an Age of Risk London, Polity Press.
30
Gordon, W. (2002) Brand green: Mainstream or forever niche? London, Green Alliance

to these ideas... politicians are unlikely to be good at asking fundamental
questions about the purpose of growth and consumption.
31

Page 22

Evidence suggests that feelings about a lack of real personal influence over
environmental problems is even more pronounced in disadvantaged groups.
Asked in focus groups which environmental issues concerned them,
participants from disadvantaged communities were largely unfamiliar with
the language of environmentalism, [their] environmental concerns
focused on the impact of local problems on health and well-being. The
study by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation concludes that environmental
issues must be connected firmly to peoples everyday lives, if they are to
motivate and inspire.
32

It may be that the all-encompassing nature of sustainable development
makes communication of environmental issues more difficult. The lack of
public engagement in the recent Johannesburg summit is a case in point
environmental group WWF reported a sad lack of interest in the summit
from the general public, because of the broadness and lack of immediate
relevance of the issues at stake.
33
This points to the need to communicate in
small, manageable, relevant chunks, rather than selling an entire world-view.

It could be argued that sustainable consumption is a more manageable
concept to communicate than sustainable development. This is also where
individuals have the most impact through behaviours such as ethical
purchasing, altering the use of a product to save energy or pollution, and
recycling or reusing. Sustainable consumption also has a familiar precedent
in the idea of waste not want not, and the rationing mentality of the war
and post war years.

However, sustainable consumption remains difficult to communicate
because experts cant agree what sustainable consumption means;
consuming responsibly, consuming less or consuming differently
34
.

31
Christie, I. & Warburton D (2001) From Here to Sustainability: Politics in the Real World, London,
Earthscan
32
Burningham, K and Thrush, D, Rainforests are a long way from here: The environmental concerns of
disadvantaged groups, 2001, Joseph Rowntree Foundation
33
WWF in evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee report on UK Preparations for the
World Summit on Sustainable Development, third report, 2002
34
Jackson, T. and L. Michaelis (2003). Policies for Sustainable Consumption. London, Sustainable
Development Commission.

Page 23

There are also huge vested interests at work, perhaps preventing the real
case to be stated.

All these factors make environmental issues, and sustainable consumption
issues and their solutions difficult to communicate.

However, it is certainly true that awareness and endorsement of the need to
conserve the natural world and reduce the risk of natural disasters such as
climate change is high amongst the general population, as demonstrated in
high membership of organisations such as WWF and Greenpeace. A key
challenge is bridging the gulf between high levels of public agreement on
conservation issues, and the low priority accorded to environmental
concerns in personal lifestyle decisions.

Worlds apart: awareness and action

Surveys consistently show that people are willing to change their behaviour
to limit environmental damage. For example, a UNEP survey of 700 global
consumers, found that 83% thought all of society should be responsible for
changing consumption patterns and promoting sustainability, closely
followed by governments (76%) and business (70%). The same survey
showed that most consumers (and particularly those in the middle to upper
income groups) would support initiatives to change their consumption
patterns.
35

However, the attitudes expressed in surveys do not necessarily flow through
into action. A report from the Co-op Bank in 2000 described the
phenomenon by which roughly 30% of consumers claim to care about
companies environmental and social track records, yet only 3% channel
these beliefs into their purchasing preferences.
36

Similarly, a MORI survey in 1999 showed that 25% of domestic electricity
customers (representing up to 5.7 million households) would be interested
in a green electricity tariff, even if this meant paying a little more to access

35
Bentley, M. (2000). Consumer trends and expectations: An international survey focusing on
environmental impacts UNEP Industry and Environment Review. 23: p9-11
36
Cowe, R. & Williams, S. (2000). Where are the ethical consumers? The Co-operative Bank

renewable sources.
37
Yet four years after such tariffs became available, their
market share remains pitifully low.
38

Page 24

Another example from the London Borough of Lambeth further illustrates
the difficulty in triggering action, even when the right incentives are in
place. Lambeths Private Landlords Energy Award Scheme (PLEAS) offered
landlords 50% grants towards energy efficiency improvements, with interest
free loans of up to 25%. Yet uptake remained very low, and the council
concluded that although their market research had shown that landlords
valued the idea of reducing costs through energy efficiency, this concern was
not sufficient to make them willing to pay upfront.
39

Although there remains a significant gulf between claimed and actual
behaviour, ethical purchasing continues to grow. The Ethical Purchasing
Index, developed by the Co-operative Bank and New Economics
Foundation, has recorded a dramatic increase in the sales of ethical products
since its inception in 1999. The market share of organic food is up by 28%.
Ethical investment and banking has seen a growth of 30%. Energy efficient
household appliances are now becoming the norm, with nearly 60% market
share.
40

These increases are encouraging but not enough. Extending environmental
behaviour from the concerned few to the mainstream is the next task of
environmental influencing techniques.

Why labelling isnt enough

Eco-labelling is perhaps the best example of a policy which relies on a naive
conceptualisation of human behaviour. The assumption is that information
drives action, so that an eco-label on a product will be sufficient to change
purchasing decisions. However, all the available evidence suggests that this
is a false assumption: people do not purchase in a rational, information-
seeking way.

This may be why eco-label schemes have been such a failure. Even the most
successful scheme, the German Blue Angel label, which has been running

37
http://www.mori.com/polls/1999/energy02.shtml
38
GreenPrice index www.greenprices.com/uk/
39
Blaza, A. & Horrax, S. (2002) It's your choice: influencing more sustainable patterns of consumption
in the UK, Imperial College and UNED UK.
40
The Co-operative Bank/New Economics Foundation (2002) The Ethical Purchasing Index 2002.
Manchester

Page 25

for twenty-five years, still only applies to 90 product groups. And five years
after a Blue Angel label was introduced for car tyres, only one manufacturer
had bothered to qualify for it.
41
The EU-wide eco-label, meanwhile, has been
a spectacular failure, as Michael Meacher acknowledged when he was
environment minister: How many people in the street know about it?
Despite a lot of debate, take-up Europe-wide has been low. It is not
working.
42
Meacher went on to argue that eco-labels will only work if
marketing efforts are put into explaining the reasons for the labels in other
words, if we accept that information alone will not drive action.

The same limitations apply to on pack green claims. Although a Green
Claims Code now exists to promote best practice in this area, a National
Consumer Council survey in 2001 found that 25% of products still failed the
code. Recognition and understanding of logos was low, and many claims
were still vague and misleading.
43

Reaching the many

In 1996, a research team at Harvard Business School published an influential
paper which argued that conventional marketing techniques rely on a clear
perception of individual benefit and are therefore difficult to apply to ethical
issues such as the environment.
44
The researchers developed an analytical
framework for social marketers that viewed the change being advocated
from the potential adopters perspective. The model categorised challenges
in terms of cost of adoption (time, effort and/or resources) and tangibility of
benefits, and recommended marketing strategies accordingly.

The paper argues that where action clearly benefits the individual and costs
are low, the key success factors are communication and information. This
also applies where inaction has clear, individual disbenefits, which explains
the success of education campaigns to reduce drink driving or to increase
breast-feeding.

However, influencing environmental behaviour tends to fall into the next
category, where costs are low but action is not compelling because benefits
are generally intangible, and are experienced at the level of society rather

41
Blue Angel ecolabel scheme turns twenty-five, Environment Daily 1455, June 2003
42
Michael Meacher, speech to SERA sustainable consumption seminar, 21 May 2003
43
National Consumer Council (1999) The Green Claims Code: Is it working? Part I: results of the
monitoring surveys in the code's first year. London, National Consumer Council.
44
Rangan, Karim & Sandberg, Do better at doing good, Harvard Business Review, May-June 1996.

Page 26

than the individual. Here convenience is said to be the key: Marketers facing
these challenges need to focus their efforts on providing a catalyst for change
in the form of a convenient way for the target population to comply.
45
This
idea is backed up by a recent MORI survey, in which respondents cite
benefits such as cheaper 'green' products (36%), better health benefits (44%)
and more convenient local recycling facilities (42%) as their main
motivators for becoming more environmentally friendly.
46

It seems clear that convenience is an important precursor to individual
action but may not in and of itself act as a sufficient trigger. The potential to
move environmental behaviour into the first category linking it directly to
individual benefits, through financial incentives such as variable household
waste charges tends to be under-explored in this context.

Connecting with the heart not the head

Methods of environmental persuasion can take a variety of different forms.
NGOs, such as Greenpeace, sometimes bypass traditional channels to spread
campaign messages through viral or guerilla marketing tactics. The anti-
advertising movement even has its own magazine known as Adbusters,
which is linked to the Culture Jammers Network who engage in activities
such as the subversion of billboards.

These more radical approaches appear to have latched onto something that
many marketing experts would recommend: to change behaviour, you need
to connect with the heart, and not the head. The benefits of engaging with
deeply held beliefs is well illustrated by the Dont mess with Texas
campaign; an initiative designed to tackle the growing litter problem in
Texas. The advertisers carried out research which showed that the main
culprits - young males were unlikely to respond to messages about not
spoiling the natural environment. Instead, they decided to base the message
on state pride, hence the Dont mess with Texas tagline. Within 12 months,
the number of litter incidents plummeted by 29%.
47

In contemporary marketing, brands are designed to generate and elicit this
type of values-based, emotional response. Brands are all about ideas,
feelings, aspirations, - not just the products themselves. Those seeking to

45
ibid
46
http://www.mori.com/polls/2001/rd010410.shtml
47
Fenton Communications (2001) Now Hear This; The Nine Laws of Successful Advocacy
Communications, Washington DC

promote sustainable consumption need to learn from this. Michael Wilmott
of the Future Foundation has developed the idea of citizen brands whereby
corporations trade on their broader ethical reputation. Citizen brands might
also involve moving away from the manufacture of products to the leasing
of services, for example in the home energy market.
Page 27

As this chapter has shown, although there is rising awareness of
environmental issues, there is still a long way to go in communicating the
benefits of environmentally-beneficial behaviour in ways that connect at an
emotional level. Policy makers and campaigners need a more sophisticated
understanding of how environmental impacts can be locked in to
particular lifestyles, and how those lifestyles are most likely to be influenced
through peer networks.

The Climate Change Communications Project

What would a new approach to influencing public behaviour look like in practice?
An interesting blueprint is contained in a recent report from the Climate Change
Communications Project, an independent group seeking to engage the public in
the development of a low-carbon future.
48
Their proposed campaign has five
components:

i) A simple, powerful message, developed in conjunction with NGOs, businesses,
scientists and communications professionals;

ii) Delivery of the message through a wide range of channels, including television
advertising and TV weather reports; business and NGO messages to their
customers and supporters;

iii) A sustained campaign, which does not change the core message, but which
could shift in focus over time, for example emphasising problems, then solutions in
turn;

iv) Management and coordination from an independent board, with creative
independence from government;

v) Explicit links to existing government initiatives on climate change, such as the
work of the Energy Saving Trust.

48
Calder, F. (2003, forthcoming) The climate change communications project: a proposal for a new
campaign to engage the public in the development of a low-carbon future for the UK

It is now possible to discern the contours of a new approach. Our draft
guidelines, outlined in Chapter 4, suggest that public influencing must be
based on a sustained, consistent campaign, going beyond the provision of
information. It must engage and motivate, by building green brands,
involving companies and voluntary organizations, and linking to
government policy and legislation.
Page 28

However, before moving to the guidelines themselves, the next chapter
details three case studies, which illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of
different approaches to public influencing. The case studies are based on a
combination of desk research and in-depth interviews.


3. Three case studies

3.1 Environmental awareness campaigns

Interviewees
Page 29
Bob Ryder, Head of Environment, Business and Consumers Division, Defra
Charles Harkness, Marketing Unit, Environmental Protection, Defra
Kelly Freeman, Head of Communications, Defra
Mike Porter, Communications Manager, Defra
George Burgess, Head of Sustainable Development, Scottish Executive
Paul Morrissey, Department of Environment, Irish Government

The most ambitious environmental awareness campaigns of recent years
the UK-wide Are you doing your bit? (AYDYB) and the Scottish Executives
Do a little, change a lot are now on hold. The reasons for their
discontinuation differ: AYDYB was suspended due to funding being
diverted elsewhere; the Scottish Executive has placed a temporary
moratorium on all government advertising due to intense public and media
scrutiny of the costs. George Burgess of the Scottish Executives Sustainable
Development Unit admits there is a perception that government
advertising is advertising government.

Meanwhile, in Ireland, the equivalent government campaign Its easy to
make a difference has also been discontinued, and replaced by a narrower
campaign focused on building public acceptance for waste management
options, including incineration.

The campaigns

Are you doing your bit? ran from March 1998 to October 2000, at a total
cost of 28.4 million. The box overleaf gives a breakdown of the campaign:

Campaign Strategy

Preliminary year (1998/99) Educate and inform via press ads
3.4m Provide incentives exhaust emission
checks
Page 30

Year 1 (1999/2000) 7m Inform/motivate via TV, radio and
press ads
Build national/local partnerships
Use roadshow/regional media

Years 2/3 (2000/02) 9m per yr Motivate using TV/Press/Consumer
incentives

The Scottish Executive launched Do a little, change a lot following
devolution, as a successor campaign to AYDYB. It ran for three years at a
cost of 900,000. Its aims were the same: to raise awareness, and translate
this into action. However, in contrast to AYDYB the scheme prioritised
tracking research on behavioural change (not simply awareness).

Awareness into action?

An internal Defra review of AYDYB concluded that it had created a strong
campaign brand and succeeded in raising awareness, but that personal
motivation to act appeared less strong and there had only been small
changes in consumer attitude or behaviour.
49
Nine in ten people surveyed
said they already carried out the actions promoted, and only two in ten felt
that they were motivated to do anything more by the campaign.

This gap between environmental awareness and personal action is
acknowledged in the original rationale for AYDYB, but raising awareness

49
Defra (2003) Development of the UKs campaign to stimulate public action to protect the
environment (March 1998 October 2000), (unpublished)

was still made a primary goal. Surveys conducted prior to AYDYB found
that 87 per cent of the public were concerned, and yet the challenge faced
by the campaign was how to make people care.

Page 31

Tracking research following the Scottish Executives campaign in September
2002 found there was not a very strong evidence of change of behaviour
linked to the advert campaign.
50
This led to the conclusion that while
professed concern about the environment may be increasing on the macro
level, it does not feature highly on the agenda as far as personal behaviour is
concerned. It is more convenient to feign ignorancethan actually to
change ones behaviour. Those who had seen the most recent TV advert
were just as likely to agree that they were unsure of what lifestyle changes
they could make to help the environment as those who had not.
51

The conclusion to be drawn from both is that information-based advertising
campaigns can have only a limited impact on public behaviour. The
question of what would be more effective has been at the heart of the current
review: DETR was focussing on simple actions where legislation was not
practical and promoting a range of good habits rather than products that are
widely available in stores. To be successful and change behaviour DETR
needed to change attitudes first, overcoming inertia, apathy and consumer
reluctance to take action, unless its cheap, easy and convenient and there is
a personal benefit.
52

An assumption made by the campaign was that information-based coaxing
was the main alternative to legislation. As a result, it did not address issues
of price and convenience, and neither did it take account of the
shortcomings of information-based advertising. The campaign also ran on
the basis that awareness would lead to action, when this is rarely the case.

Recognising this problem, the Scottish Executive ran a series of focus group
to identify triggers to action around energy efficiency and waste reduction.
Participants made it clear that helping to save the planet by switching off
lights has some appeal, but is unlikely to act as a strong driver to consistent
action. The simultaneous opportunity to save money is more likely to make
people take notice participants were struck by a poster that compared the

50
Survey on Environmental Issues in Scotland, System Three, September 2002
http://www.scotland.gov.uk/library5/environment/surveyenv02.pdf
51
ibid
52
Defra (2003) Development of the UKs campaign to stimulate public action to protect the
environment (March 1998 October 2000), (unpublished)

costs of keeping a TV switched on all year to keeping it on standby (few had
realised that standby mode consumes only marginally less energy).

Page 32

Focus group participants also stressed the difficulty of responding to
recycling messages for those who live in flats, or several miles from recycling
facilities. In the recent Survey of Public Attitudes to the Environment in
Scotland, 88 per cent of those surveyed said they would recycle paper, 85 per
cent glass and 79 per cent cans, if this was made convenient through a
doorstep collection service.
53
Similarly, an Environment Agency survey for
England in 2002 found that 9 out of 10 people would recycle more waste if it
were made easier.
54

The importance of cost and convenience is well known to social marketers,
but these factors are often downplayed by public influencing campaigns
because they require action in policy realms, such as fiscal policy or the
development of infrastructure, which are beyond the remit of those running
the campaigns.

In AYDYB, the campaign strategy acknowledges that supporting
infrastructure, with clear signals from Government and business that they
are leading, is also essential to change consumer attitudes. But the
campaign plan of action made no reference to parallel delivery of enabling
infrastructure, such as doorstep recycling, or supportive fiscal policies to
reduce the cost of energy saving devices. The preliminary year includes the
objective of providing incentives, but these ran no further than the
provision of free exhaust checks.

George Burgess, Head of Sustainable Development at the Scottish Executive
accepts the need for a more holistic approach to public influencing. Large
scale advertising campaigns do not work in isolation, he says, they need to
be part of a wider package of measures.

The Scottish Executive appears to have taken this into account in its
approach to promoting recycling. In common with most schemes, an
advertising agency was contracted for the campaign, but the agency in this
case, Barkers Advertising, actually had someone based in the Sustainable
Development team for two years as campaign manager. This person was

53
Hinds, K., Carmichael, K. & Snowling, H. (2001) Public Attitudes to the Environment in Scotland
Scottish Executive National Statistics
54
Environment Agency press release 23 May 2002

able to liase closely with the waste and climate change teams that were
responsible for the delivery of policy relating to the campaign goals.

Partly as a consequence of this, the second TV advert campaign on waste
coincided with the launch of the national waste strategy, which assigned
200m to improving local recycling facilities. Due to the variation in
recycling facilities across Scotland, the TV advert had to work nationwide
and could not, for instance, advise people to take their plastics to a local
facility. However, the campaign also involved extensive work with local
authorities to develop adverts for local newspapers and radio, which could
provide specific details of existing and proposed local facilities.
Page 33

Tracking research undertaken after the three waves of the Scottish campaign
generally found raised awareness but little evidence of behaviour change.
The exception to this was the waste awareness work, which led to a
discernible rise in recycling levels. The survey found that in line with
increased access to facilities, there has been a commensurate increase in the
percentage recycling any household waste to 70 per cent. In addition to new
recruits to recycling, others are becoming more active in the range of waste
materials which they recycle. The researchers concluded that availability
of facilities for recycling is a major influence on participation in such
activity. Further facilities will come on stream over the next two years, and
the Scottish Executive plans to work with local authorities to further
publicise local recycling opportunities.

The review of AYDYB draws out several lessons, but fails to indicate which
of these are most significant. The principles that infrastructure must be
available, and consumer incentives are an important way of stimulating
individual action, are acknowledged; but they are also preceded by a
re-statement of the mantra that to stimulate action, attitudes must be
changed first.

In the past, DETR/Defra has perhaps placed too much faith in the idea that
information drives action. Ministers and policy teams have decided the
overall objectives of marketing campaigns, and have then left delivery to
marketing agencies. There has been too little integration of communication
and policy, to ensure that government is seen to be playing its full part.

Greater efforts should be made to emphasise potential cost savings. Building
on the messages coming out of their focus groups, the Scottish Executive
plans to emphasise in future campaigns the financial incentives for action on

energy efficiency. The hope is that the feel-good factor generated will
transfer over into action on recycling, where there is currently no financial
incentive.

The potential for financial incentives in areas such as recycling, for example
through variable household charges, should be explored further. Such
measures can act as a guarantee of collective action and environmental
effectiveness, addressing key barriers to individual action. The popular
support for the plastic bag levy in Ireland (discussed in the next case study)
suggests that the public may in fact welcome the imposition of a strong
financial sanction against inaction, perhaps because this guarantees that
individuals are not acting alone, and that a better overall environmental
outcome will be secured.
Page 34

This argument could be extended further, to suggest that government
should only consider running an information campaign if it can offer some
additional policy solutions alongside it. Without those additional policies,
there is little point in the campaign. Awareness-raising reinforces other
policies; it will have little impact in its own right.

In conclusion, the reasons for low rates of public response to environmental
awareness campaigns - however well marketed - are increasingly accepted.
Awareness will only trigger action if upfront costs are not prohibitive,
supporting infrastructure is in place, and there is some guarantee that the
majority cannot continue to free ride on the individual sacrifices of a few.
The new toolkit for public influencing should include enabling facilities, and
financial sanctions as well as incentives.

3.2 Plastic bags

Interviewees
Paul Morrissey, Environmental Awareness division, Department of
Environment, Irish Government
Page 35
Mary OKeefe, Waste Management Division, Department of Environment,
Irish Government
Eleanor Ashton, Clean up Australia

Plastic bags are a highly visible form of litter. UK consumers use an
estimated 8 billion plastic shopping bags each year, and most are discarded
as waste after a single use. Less than one per cent are returned or recycled.

Initiatives in the Republic of Ireland and Australia over the past decade have
attempted to encourage the public to reduce, re-use and recycle plastic bags.
Following a recent analysis of these initiatives, the two governments arrived
at very different strategies for tackling the problem in future. In March 2002,
the Irish Government imposed a point-of-sale levy on plastic bags. In
December 2002, the Australian Federal Government launched a new
education campaign to persuade shoppers to stop using plastic bags. This
case study considers what can be learned from both approaches.

Australia

The Australian Minister for the Environment and Heritage, David Kemp
recently argued that In terms of recycling and general waste management,
Australia is way ahead of Ireland which this year introduced a levy on plastic
bags. He went on to argue that Australians respond well to recycling when
they have the facilities to do it, which is why voluntary initiatives are likely
to be much more successful there than in some countries.

Plastic bag recycling facilities are widely available in Australian cities. Many
local councils, environment groups and some retailers have promoted the
use of alternatives such as calico bags, as well as highlighting the impacts of
plastic bags on aquatic life through graphic imagery. In November 2001, the
first nationally based plastic bag campaign was implemented by Clean Up
Australia in partnership with the Australian Retailers Association,
Environment Australia, Coles and Woolworths. The Bag Yourself a Better
Environment campaign ran for a week and involved calico bag promotions,
plastic-bag-free lanes in supermarkets and a website giving tips.


Page 36

The federal government decided to sponsor Bag Yourself A Better
Environment to run for a second month in March 2003. The theme this time
was encouraging people to Refuse, Reduce, Reuse and Recycle their plastic
bags. Local government was heavily involved. For example, Wollongong
Council ran a successful promotion, offering to exchange 20 or more plastic
bags for a free calico bag. On the first day, the council received over
1,200 plastic bags.

The campaign both in 2001 and 2003 - achieved short-term increases in
recycling and the use of alternatives. Yet according to survey data collected
by Clean Up Australia, although 92 per cent indicated that the effects of
plastic bags on wildlife was a major concern, the majority of respondents
indicated that they were still unlikely to use an alternative (72 per cent),
reuse a bag (63 per cent) or recycle a bag (64 per cent). The latest figures
suggest that only around 1 per cent of Australias plastic bags are currently
being recycled.

In 2002, the Federal Government commissioned a study of the options for
reducing plastic bag use, and set up a National Working Group on plastic
bags. The Working Group noted that there have been numerous plastic bags
campaigns, which have been effective in raising the communitys awareness
that plastic bags can be harmful to the environment and have encouraged a
small percentage of consumers to change their behaviour.
55
The consultants
evaluated other policy options pursued internationally, and concluded that a
mandatory levy was the most effective option.

On the day that the Irish levy came into force, the Australian NGO Planet
Ark launched a major campaign for an Australian levy, on the grounds that
a financial incentive is essential for changing attitudes to plastic bags. This
campaign has been successful in raising public awareness, and has enjoyed
widespread media coverage. A recent survey identified that eight out of ten
Australians now support a levy on plastic bags.

Ireland

In Ireland, plastic shopping bags have long been a cause of public concern,
They were a visible problem in rural environments with an impact on
tourism, Irelands second largest industry. An estimated 1.28 billion plastic

55
National Plastic Bags Working Group (2002) Report to the National Packaging Covenant Council,
December 2002


shopping bags (325 bags per person) were consumed annually, at a cost to
retailers of $50 million. However, the recycling rate was below 0.5 per cent.

Page 37

A consultancy study commissioned by the government in 2001 noted that:
While efforts have been made over recent years by many retailers to
encourage the use of alternatives to free plastic shopping bag, these have not
been particularly successful to date - mainly due, it would seem, to
consumer apathy.
56
Opportunities for recycling plastic bags are limited,
owing to a lack of infrastructure for collection and processing.

The consultancy study recommended a levy, and in 2001 the Waste
Management (Environmental Levy Plastic Bag) Regulations were brought
into effect, levying all plastic bags with a charge of 0.15. This levy is
imposed at the point of sale, and retailers are legally obliged to pass it on
directly to the customer. This contrasts with Denmark, where the 1994
plastic bag tax is included in the price of bags to the retailer, so is less
obvious to consumers.

The Irish levy, or PlasTax, has been a phenomenal success, leading to a 90
per cent reduction in the consumption of plastic bags.
57
It is important to
note the relatively high level of tax. The intent appears effectively to ban
plastic bags, without eliminating them as an option altogether.

To accompany the introduction of the PlasTax, the Irish Government
launched a comprehensive education campaign. Pamphlets were sent to
every household outlining why the levy was being introduced, and how
consumers could avoid the levy by using reusable bags. Retailers were given
leaflets to publicise the measure. Revenue generated by the PlasTax is also
earmarked for an Environmental Fund, which will be used to support waste
management and other environmental initiatives. The fund is expected to be
worth around 55 million in 2003.
58

A TV and billboard campaign was launched just before the levy came in to
force. The TV advertisement, which was shown on all Irish channels,
featured a long-haired dog surrounded by a storm of plastic bag litter. It ran
for a month, and was complemented by an outdoor poster campaign, also
featuring the dog.

56
Ref?
57
Department of the Environment, press release, August 2002
58
ENDS Environment Daily, 15 July 2003

Page 38

According to Mary OKeefe of the Waste Division, Nobody complained
about it. People only complained about retailers not enforcing it properly.
After the levy announcement Tesco Ireland's environmental manager, Jim
Dwyer, was reported as saying: Customers are telling us they broadly
welcome the introduction of the levy. We have seen asignificant increase
in sales of our re-usable bags.

A report on the PlasTax by Nolan ITU noted that: According to both the
Department of the Environment and retailers, there has been a high level of
understanding and acceptance of the PlasTax; both attribute this in part to
the education campaign that occurred prior to its introduction. Retailers
commented that they encountered little difficulty with customer resistance
or lack of understanding.
59

The Irish experience suggests that fiscal incentives, allied to effective public
education, create a powerful combination that is genuinely capable of
shifting public behaviour. The most recent survey found that 91 per cent of
the population believes that the PlasTax was a good idea.
60
According to
Paul Morrissey of the Environmental Awareness team, this shows that the
public may be unwilling to take action for the greater public good unless
there is some form of financial incentive or punishment.

Following the success of the levy, the Irish government is now exploring
similar measures in other areas. Opinion polls seem to suggest there are
significant levels of public support, notably for a levy on chewing gum (42
per cent in favour), household waste (27 per cent in favour), and plastic
water bottles (26 per cent in favour). Most recently, Irish environment
minister Martin Cullen has announced plans to introduce a tax on
polystyrene fast food packaging, which often litters the streets: My plan is
to end polystyrene. If companies are slow in doing so, I will use a levy to
bring about the changeover.
61

In the wake of the Irish success, there are also signs that UK public opinion
is shifting on this issue. A MORI poll carried out in February 2003 showed
that 63% of consumers support the idea of paying a 10 pence levy on plastic
bags, with only 27% actively opposed.
62

59
NOLAN-ITU (2002) Plastic Shopping Bags Analysis of Levies and Environmental Impacts, Final
Report, December 2002
60
[ref?] Attitude and Action survey 2003 (unpublished)
61
ENDS Environment Daily, 15 July 2003
62
www.mori.com/polls/2003/meb1.shtml

3.3 Five-a-day

Interviewees
Katy Tappar, Bangor University
Jane Wardle, Health Behaviour Unit, University College London
Page 39
Sheela Reddy, Department of Health
Jeanette Longfield, Sustain

According to the British Heart Foundation, nearly half of all deaths from
coronary heart disease in Britain are due to raised cholesterol.
63
Poor diets
are also a contributing factor to around a third of all cancer cases.
64
Yet diets
in the UK are getting worse, not better. The rise of obesity amongst children
is particularly worrying, with 22% of children now classified as obese, a
figure which has more than doubled in the past thirty years.
65

Despite these shock statistics, awareness of specific links between diet and
disease is not particularly high amongst the general public. As the Health
Behaviour Unit at Cancer Research UK observes: People are unaware that
different cancers have different causes and outcomes, they are ignorant
about recommendations to increase fruit and vegetable intake, or the
hypothesised role of diet in cancer.
66
Similarly, a recent survey by the
British Heart Foundation found that losing eyesight (27%) topped peoples
fears of growing older, with only 9% citing too high cholesterol, despite
the latter being a far greater risk.
67

Although many people have a general sense that they would like to eat more
healthily, or lose weight, the evidence is that a well balanced diet is far from
the norm for British people. The National Diet and Nutrition Survey found
that only 13% of men and 15% of women ate five or more portions of fruit
and vegetables a day. Average daily consumption among adults was around
only 3 portions.
68
Like smoking patterns, there is a considerable social

63
British Heart Foundation. www.bhf.org.uk
64 Doll R and Peto R (1981). The Causes of Cancer: Quantitative Estimates of Avoidable Risks of
Cancer in the United States Today. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
.
65
Chinn, S & Rona, R (2000) Prevalence and trends in overweight and obesity in three cross sectional
studies of British children 1974 1994 British Medical Journal 322, pp24-26
66
Cancer Research UK, Health Behaviour Unit website http://science.cancerresearchuk.org/
67
British Heart Foundation press release, June 17 2003
68
The National Diet and Nutrition Survey, 2001, available on the Food Standard Agencys website
www.foodstandards.gov.uk

divide between rich and poor, with the less affluence being much more likely
to have poorer diets.

It is widely recognised that increasing fruit and vegetable intake could
dramatically reduce the incidence of many serious diseases and lead to
corresponding savings within the NHS. The governments Five a day
campaign is an effort to encourage consumers to increase their fruit and
vegetable intake to at least five portions a day. The campaign has a historical
precedent, with a number of large charities in the UK having campaigned on
this issue for a number of years.
Page 40

The five a day programme is managed by the Department of Health and
incorporates five strands:
A national free fruit scheme for primary school children;
Local five-a-day initiatives funded by the New Opportunities Fund
to improve access to fruit and vegetables, especially amongst low
income groups;
National and local partners amongst government, health and
consumer groups;
A communications programme including a five-a-day logo for use
on products and promotional material;
Work with industry: food producers, caterers and retailers.

Strengths of the scheme

There is evidence that the five-a-day message has increased peoples
awareness of the importance of healthy eating. The Food Standards
Agencys 2002 survey of consumer attitudes found that 52% of respondents
were aware of the five-a-day message, compared with only 43% in 2000. The
highest levels of awareness were found amongst people in the A or B socio-
economic groups (70% in 2002) and the lowest amongst people in social
groups D or E (39% in 2002).

There are various reasons for the relatively high awareness of the five a day
message. One of our interviewees pointed out the strong historical
precedent of fruit and vegetable promotion including eat your greens, and
an apple a day keeps the doctor away (though she also pointed out the
problem that the apple a day message implies only one a day is sufficient).
The longevity of the message has helped cement the association between
healthiness and fruit and vegetables in a way that is not always the case in
other communications based on complex science.

Page 41

Also helpful is the fact that the message is not owned by any one group.
Health charities, food manufacturers and retailers are all involved in
promoting it, which means that consumers are likely to experience
repetition of the message in a number of different contexts. Government can
then take on the role of clarifying the message, rather than having to
legitimise it. So, the Department of Health sometimes intervenes to clear up
misinterpretations, such as whether potatoes or orange juice count towards
the five a day goal.

How far this general awareness is being translated into behaviour change is
yet to be seen. The only evaluation to be published so far is of local schemes,
funded by the New Opportunities Fund, aimed at improving access to fruit
and vegetables in a local area. Based on only a years data, this evaluation
shows that the local initiatives did counteract the national trend towards a
fall in fruit and vegetable intakes. 35% of people living in the target areas
reported that their access to fruit and vegetables had improved, compared to
only 21% living in the control areas. The schemes were most significant
amongst those with the lowest intakes, who were shown to have increased
their intake by one portion.
69

The free fruit in schools campaign has not yet been officially evaluated.
However, the general evidence is that it has been well received in schools,
especially by teachers who choose to incorporate the scheme into their
teaching. It is not yet clear how the scheme is impacting on childrens wider
diets. However, a related scheme run by Sustain, the sustainable food
charity, found some evidence that wider availability of fruit in schools was
displacing unhealthier snacks such as crisps.
70

Five-a-day promotional material tends to focus on the variety of colours,
textures and ways to cook vegetables and fruit, and avoids preachy messages
about the dangers of unhealthy eating. This is important for children, who
can find it impossible to relate to long-term message about disease
prevention. Indeed, some studies have shown that telling children that a
food is healthy may even reduce their acceptance of that food.
71
As one

69
Department of Health (2002) Five a day Community Pilot Initiatives: Key findings,
November 2002
70 Summary of the Grab 5! Evaluation report, November 2002, Sustain, London
71 Gibson, E.L., Wardle, J. & Watts, C.J. (1998) Fruit and vegetable consumption, nutritional
knowledge and beliefs in mothers and children. Appetite 31, 205-228. and Wardle J., Cooke

commentator said in our interviews: Health promoters were just so relieved
about having something positive to say. For years theyve been saying dont
do this, or have this, and now the message is eat it all!

Page 42

Weaknesses of the scheme

The most widely reported weakness of the scheme relates to misleading
claims by food manufacturers and retailers.
72
For example, Heinz promotes
about 70 products under the banner of "five-a-day the Heinz way", including
unusual vegetables such as tinned spaghetti. Other misleading claims have
been made about soup, and even ice cream. There have been problems in
using existing trading standards rules to prevent such misleading claims.
Part of the problem stemmed from timing complications. The development
of the official five-a-day logo, and the criteria for using it, took longer than
expected. By the time it was launched, industry only schemes, such as
Sainsburys Way to Five, were already established. Even now, some retailers
have withdrawn support from the scheme because of disputes over
permitted levels of salt and sugar. All of this runs the danger of confusing
consumers with mixed messages. Indeed, 79% of respondents in a recent
survey incorrectly believed that a jacket potato should count toward their
daily intake of fruit and vegetables.
73

Potentially more damaging than a few wild claims is the threat of overload
from rival schemes. The Dairy Council are now preparing their 3-a-day
scheme for dairy products, and Cancer Research is promoting its Red
Amber Green rule for fruit and vegetable choice. The worry is that too
many schemes may turn off consumers from message altogether.

In fact, the five-a-day message, although very positive, may be difficult to
embed in sustainable behaviour change because it is based on a resolution
model of behaviour change. Aiming to achieve five-a-day is psychologically
similar to other resolutions, such as diets, which are notoriously difficult to
maintain.

As we have highlighted earlier, the most effective route for influencing
behaviour, is in fact through peer influence and imitation. In the context of

L.J., Gibson, et al. (2002) Increasing childrens acceptance of vegetables: a randomised trial of guidance
to parents. Appetite 38, 1-9.
72
See for example The Guardian 5 a day fruit and veg plan revamped, James Meikle, 11 January 2003
73
Statistics on public awareness of the 5 a day message and attitudes to the consumption of fruit and
vegetables Department of Health, January 2003 Press Release

Page 43

food consumption, this principle is reinforced by the work being undertaken
at Bangor Food Research Unit (BFRU) with primary school children.
74
As
Katy Tapper from the unit says: Instead of attempting to change knowledge
about healthy eating, or attitudes towards particular foods, we have focussed
on food consumption itself and drawn on principles from social learning
theory, developmental psychology and behaviour analysis.
75

The scheme developed at Bangor known as the food dudes uses a
system of role modelling, repetition and rewards to achieve behaviour
change amongst children. Peer modelling schemes amongst children, whilst
expensive, are relatively easy to conduct because of the school environment.
Peer modelling schemes amongst adults are much more difficult, and there
is as yet no evidence about how the five-a-day scheme is used and
interpreted within peer networks.

It is possible that some of the more drastic measures being considered to
enforce healthy eating, such as the imposition of a fat tax or legal action
against junk food retailers, may stem from our desire to establish norms of
what is and is not acceptable in the social activity of eating. The fact that a
debate is now raging in the media about obesity is perhaps an early sign of
healthy eating being normalised through peer to peer networks of approval
and disapproval. How government can facilitate this, perhaps through
reward systems, or identifying effective influencers, is a challenge that we
shall return to in the final chapter.

74
Lowe, C.F., Horne, P.J., Tapper, K., Bowdery, M. & Egerton, C. (2003, forthcoming) Effects of a
peer modelling and rewards based intervention to increase fruit and vegetable consumption in
children European Journal of Clinical Nutrition
75
Tapper, K., Horne, P.J. & Lowe, C.F. (2003) The Food Dudes to the rescue! The Psychologist 16(1),
18-21.

4. Seven steps towards successful influencing

In this section we synthesise the key conclusions from the literature review
and case studies into seven steps that should suggest should be followed in
any public influencing campaign:
Page 44
Define your objective.
Make the links across government goals and policies.
Dont assume that information leads to awareness or awareness to
action.
Assess the audience and finesse the message.
Communicate creatively.
Its all about networks.
Sustain, build and learn the lessons.

No.1: Define your objective

Public influencing needs to be built in from the beginning, not factored in
later on. What is the objective, and how will success be measured? It is at
this point that past experience and research should be digested, and further
research commissioned as necessary.

Influencing the public is difficult, and is a relatively underdeveloped art, as
Chapter 1 shows. Public opinion is actually a febrile mix of divergent views
and opinions, not a steady state that can be easily manipulated. As described
above, a comprehensive attempt by the Health Development Agency to
review the effectiveness of health promotion work, shows that there is no
agreed formula for success and no clear understanding of what works and
why. In Chapter 2, we describe the particular difficulties about
communicating environmental messages environmental issues tend to be
complex, long-term, and difficult to relate back to individual motivation and
action.

This is why it is important to be extremely clear about what the objective of
public influencing is and how you will know if it has been successful.
There is a great deal to learn from commercial agencies, who in devising an
advertising campaign, will be very clear about the change in behaviour they
are trying to bring about.

No. 2: Make the links across government goals and policies

Page 45

Attempts at public influencing will not work in isolation from wider
government goals or policies. Public influencing should be seen as
complementary to other policies, not as a strategy in its own right. People
need to know that they are not acting in isolation. Information and
influencing campaigns will work best when people have a reason to want to
know and government is ideally placed to create that reason, through
other policy measures such as taxes or regulation. Conversely, a public
influencing campaign will help people to understand the reason for a tax.

The environment is a collective good. People recognise this, and are
understandably reluctant to change their behaviour unless they think that
others will do likewise. There is an understandable cynicism about free
riders. Eurobarometer work has shown that Europeans favour an active
attitude but, at the same time, want their action to be part of a wider
solidarity".
76
In practice, this means that public information campaigns to
encourage greener behaviour are very unlikely to be effective in isolation,
without other government policies to back them up.

Our second case study shows how Irish government attempts at reducing
plastic bag use have deliberately included both hard and soft measures a
punitive tax of 0.15 Euros on a bag, accompanied by an influencing
campaign which explains the reasons for the charge. Results have been
startlingly successful, with strong support for the tax and a 90% reduction in
consumption of plastic bags. This example shows how influencing can
reinforce legislation, and vice-versa. By comparison, in Australia, concerted
efforts at influencing and providing information about the environmental
impacts of plastic bags have not been successful in changing behaviour, with
the result that an Irish-style levy is now being considered.

In other fields, the necessity of combining public influencing with other
instruments is widely acknowledged. Examples cited above include the US
Surgeon Generals review of anti-smoking methods, which recommends a
comprehensive approach combining educational strategies, regulation
including controls on advertising, taxation, and interventions by community
groups and schools. Similarly, the UKs Think! campaign on road safety
has combined strong influencing messages, against drink-driving and
speeding, with strict enforcement of the law.

76
Eurobarometer (2002) The attitude of Europeans towards the environment. Brussels, European
Commission

There are other, more practical reasons for linking public influencing to
other government policy. People need to have a real choice to make. For
example, a campaign to promote recycling will not work unless local
authorities have put accessible recycling facilities in place. The Joseph
Rowntree Foundation study into the environmental concerns of
disadvantaged groups emphasises this point participants said that they
could not recycle waste because facilities were inaccessible. Put simply,
people need to know that if they do their bit, government will too.
Page 46

The failure of the UKs Are You Doing Your Bit campaign to change
behaviour may stem from the lack of linkages to other policies, as the first
case study above shows. Encouraging good behaviour like energy
efficiency in the home may only be effective if the correspondingly bad
behaviour is tackled, through legislation or fiscal measures. Another
shortfall of Are You Doing Your Bit was its faith in the idea that
information drives action. This is rarely the case, as the next guideline
shows.

No.3: Dont assume that information leads to awareness or
awareness to action

It is important not to overestimate the power of providing information.
Information does not necessarily lead to increased awareness, and increased
awareness does not necessarily lead to action. Information provision,
whether through advertisements, leaflets or labelling, must be backed up by
other approaches.

As we explain in Chapter 1, behaviour does not follow a linear model of
behaviour, with information leading to attention, desire for change and then
action. In contrast, as authors such as Wendy Gordon assert, decisions are
rarely rational or linear, and are more often opportunistic or emotional
impulses, based on cultural cues, family, friends, role models and wider
trends. Hence the change in commercial advertising from old-style adverts
designed to provide information, to modern approaches aimed at building a
brand. Government communications need to make this shift too.

The gap between awareness and action seems particularly acute for
environmental issues, as Chapter 2 shows. A third of consumers claim to
care about companies policies on environmental and social responsibility,
yet the market share of ethical products rarely exceeds 3%. Similarly, a

MORI poll showed that nearly 6 million households were interested in a
green energy tariff, even if they would have to pay more, yet the percentage
of households buying green tariffs remains tiny.

Similarly, research into Are You Doing Your Bit shows that the awareness
created by the campaign was not translated into action. As the case study of
AYDYB shows, awareness is a trigger to action only if costs are not
prohibitive, supporting infrastructure is in place to make the action
convenient, and there is some guarantee that the majority cannot free-ride
on the individual sacrifices of a few.
Page 47

Product labelling, in particular, has a very limited effect unless linked to
other initiatives, as our discussion of eco-labelling suggests. There is a
growing understanding that people make decisions with the heart, not the
head, relying on sensory cues and brands, not written information. In
practice, this means that government should not rely merely on providing
information, and expect action to follow it should look for creative forms
of engagement with individuals, as described in guidelines 5 and 6 below.

No. 4: Assess the audience and finesse the message

A single message cannot hope to influence all of the people, all of the time.
Who is the message aimed at? Those who are aware, but dont act; or those
who have no motivation to change at all? Is the aim to encourage certain
behaviour, or to stigmatise the wrong behaviour?

Commercial marketing campaigns always start out with a very specific
demographic in mind. They understand that different sorts of people will
respond to different messages, and target their campaigns accordingly.
Government influencing, by contrast, often attempts to reach a wider group
of people and downplays the need to tailor messages to particular audiences.

Friends of the Earth, for example, targets new parents with its safer
chemicals campaign, providing material about chemicals in the home for
parent-and-baby groups. New parents are particularly receptive to
environmental and messages as the growth in organic baby food has
shown. Another example described in this report is the anti-litter Dont Mess
with Texas campaign, which appealed to young men who were more
receptive to messages about state pride than spoiling the natural
environment.


Attempts at public influencing should therefore be carefully targeted at a
particular demographic, such as new parents, families or young people; or at
people with a particular view such as those who care about environmental
issues but do not know what action to take.

Page 48
Once the audience has been identified, the influencing strategy should target
a clear headline message to communicate. Wherever possible, this should be
a simple, powerful message that can be communicated in bite-sized chunks.
There is little point in trying to promote a very general message (be
greener) unless this is broken down into simpler, more immediate
messages. Where general messages need to be communicated, a hierarchy of
messages should be created: an overriding, general message, with simple,
specific messages following on. For example, the Think! campaign for road
safety promotes a hierarchy of specific actions wear seatbelts; dont drink
drive under a general banner of road safety awareness.

Environmental problems are often complex and long-term. They need to be
broken down into manageable actions. In the Irish example, a complex
environmental problem was broken down into a simple campaign and
policy the plastic bag levy. From this simple message, people learned wider
truths about the need for waste minimisation.

No. 5: Communicate creatively

Government often relies on conventional communication channels, such as
television advertising, but there are other routes that may be more effective.
There is no single correct approach, and it will be necessary to experiment
with different communication options.

Examples of creative communication include the guerilla marketing
approach of UK agency Cake, which painted a whole street red to celebrate
Barbies birthday; the sponsorship of particular programmes like Volvos
sponsorship of ER; the graffiti gang the TATS crew creating advertising for
Coca-Cola; and Greenpeaces protest messaging on city billboards.
Government influencing still tends to rely on providing information
through advertising, but this is of limited use (see no. 3 above).

The goal of more creative communication models is to create a buzz
through word of mouth far more potent than any direct communication.
Hotmail, Blair Witch Project and the iMac all owe their popularity to buzz,

according to Emanuel Rosen, author of The Anatomy of Buzz.
77
Government
needs to recognise this and draw more creatively on the power of buzz.

No. 6: Its all about networks
Page 49

It is important to understand how behaviour spreads through conversations,
social learning and peer group networks. The initial communication needs
to get people talking, and inspire curiosity, so that the message spreads. A
message may be best delivered not by government itself, but by
intermediaries: the Womens Institute, the National Childbirth Trust,
supermarkets, soap operas, opinion-leaders. If intermediaries are used,
government must be prepared to let go, and allow the message be developed
and interpreted by others. Key to this process will be the network hubs:
what Seth Godin calls the sneezers who spread the idea virus, or the
minority of network leaders that Opinion Leader Research define as
protagonists.

Organisations as well as individuals can act as network hubs. The five-a-
day fruit and vegetables campaign shows the strength of persuasion through
partnerships. By involving voluntary groups, schools and supermarkets, the
message has been carried far wider than a straightforward advertising
campaign would have achieved. The legitimacy of the message is increased,
as well, as using intermediaries increases trust and lessens the sense of
government preaching to citizens. It also allows influencing to happen at
each point in the decision-making process: awareness-raising is reinforced
by supermarket promotions; the reasons behind providing free fruit in
schools are explained in lessons.

Parenting education is another example of successful persuasion through
partnership. Government is not seen as an honest broker of advice, as shown
by the relatively low uptake of parenting education programmes - only
about 4% in 1994/5
78
. So the new Parenting Fund announced in the 2002
spending review will be delivered by the voluntary sector, not government.
Sure Start is a government-funded initiative which delivers parenting
education by integrating courses (such as nutritional advice), into existing
childcare or health care services. Sure Start is also innovative because of the
way the schemes involve the users in governance of the programmes. Early

77
Emanuel, R (2000) The Anatomy of Buzz: Using Invisible Networks to Spread the Word About
Your Product, HarperCollins Business
78
Family Change: Guide to the issues, February 2000Family Briefing Paper 12
Family Policy Studies Centre

indications are that parents value the many different services provided by
the programmes.
79

Page 50

In the environmental field, the UN Environment Programme recommends
the use of third party input to policy delivery for sustainable consumption.
80

Those that stand to benefit directly from a proposed change should help to
influence. For example, a tram company has the most to gain by commuters
leaving their cars at home, so they should take at least some responsibility
for communicating the message. In parcelling out responsibility in this way,
governments can create a virtuous cycle of responsibility, where small and
at least partly self-interested actions by one agent, can contribute to an
overall momentum for change. On this basis, UNEP has proposed the
development of national policy coalitions to promote production and
consumption, which do not necessarily rely on the government for
intervention and delivery.

No.7: Sustain, build, and learn the lessons

Public influencing is only effective if it is sustained over time. It needs
ongoing commitment from government. Strategies should be planned,
measured and refined over years or even decades. Lessons from public
influencing strategies should be captured and fed back systematically into
new approaches.

Government attempts to reduce drink-driving have been successful because
they have been sustained and reinforced over decades. By contrast, other
attempts at public influencing from AIDS awareness to anti-litter have
not been implemented consistently. Messages have changed over time, and
communication has been sporadic.

Given the complexity of environmental issues, there is a need for strong,
consistent messages over a long timescale, reinforced with government
policy and the actions of other parties. This means that there may be a case
for all government actions and communications on the environment to be
given a common brand (as in the Think! example for road safety) with
individual messages promoted as part of this brand.

79
The Impact of Sure Start One Year On, published by the Sure Start Unit, July 2001
80
Consumption Opportunities: Strategies for change A report for decision makers. UNEP, 2001.
http://scope.4cee.net

Appendix 1: a timeline of public influencing strategies

1940s

Page 51

The war years saw the careless talk costs lives and dig for Britain posters.

1950s

1950 The Archers began broadcasting from the BBCs Midlands Home
Service, with the aim of providing agricultural advice to a nation still
subject to food rationing. The Archers lost its official educational
purpose in 1972.

1958 The British Eggs Marketing Board launch an advertising campaign
using Tony Hancock and the famous Go to work on an egg
strapline. Egg rationing was only lifted in 1953 and consumption
increased by about 14% between 1957 and 1970.
81

1960s

1966 Saw the introduction of the road safety bill by Barbara Castle. Not all
the measures included were popular; the new breathalyser prompted
accusations of a nanny state and Killjoy Castle. It was
accompanied by various public awareness campaigns which
continue today. Attitudes to drink driving in particular have
radically changed since the 1960s.

1969 Sex education starts in earnest with the hard hitting Would you be
more careful if it was you that got pregnant? (featuring a
photograph of an apparently pregnant man) poster from the Health
Education Council.
82

1970s

81
http://195.92.138.239/marketing-study.pdf
82
Image at http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/content/images/2002_2230.JPG. The poster was
designed by Bill Atherton at Cramer Saatchi, won a D&AD Yellow Pencil for Poster Design in 1970.


Page 52

The 1970s included a series of Public Information Films commissioned by
the government agency the Central Office for Information (COI) such as the
Green Cross Man and the Charlie Says series. A plethora of other subjects
were screened including Rolf Harris encouraging parents to teach children
how to swim, the dangers of driver fatigue, the rules of the countryside code,
the anti-vandalism do you know where your lad is tonight and the
motorcycling safety take your helmet seriously.
83

The clunk-click seat belt adverts and posters which ran throughout the
1970s (featuring Jimmy Saville amongst others) helped to change public
opinion before the introduction of a new law in the 80s making the wearing
of front seatbelts compulsory.

1980s

1982 The first Neighbourhood watch is set up in the UK in Mollington
near Chester. The idea was transported from America and now
there are over 153,000 Watches in the country.
84

1983 The seat belt law cements a change in behaviour. Soon after it comes
into effect, 90 per cent of front seat drivers and passengers are
wearing belts.

1985 A consumer movement against CFCs is prompted by concerns about
the newly discovered hole in the ozone layer. Manufacturers
respond by marketing CFC-free deodorants and sprays. The
Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer is
established in 1987, with a commitment to the phasing out of CFCs
and halons.

1986 The anti fur movement gains momentum and fur becomes distinctly
unfashionable. An advert for the animal welfare charity Lynx, shot
by David Bailey said it takes over 40 dumb animals to make a coat,
but only one to wear it. The threat of violent anti fur protest also
encouraged outlets to close down.

1986 The cast of teen-drama Grange Hill is used to promote the Just say
no anti-drugs message first promoted by Nancy Reagan.

83
To view some public information films see http://625.uk.com/pifs/index.htm
84

For more information http://www.neighbourhoodwatch.net


Page 53

1987 The Dont die of ignorance Aids awareness campaign, including a
national leaflet drop, is launched. Awareness of Aids is consequently
high but the campaign has also been criticised for spreading fear.
Fifteen years on, safe sex is not a reality for many young people.
85

1990s

1993 The Lets Kick Racism Out of Football campaign is started by the
Commission for Racial Equality and the Professional Footballers
Association. The campaign continues to run and enjoys wide
support. Leaflets tell people in stadiums to take personal
responsibility for reporting racism.

1998 The Green Claims Code is established by the DETR. The aim is to
instil greater confidence in consumers trying to buy green.
However, the code is only voluntary and an evaluation by the
National Consumer Council in 1999 found that eco-labelling was
still vague and misleading.
86

1999 When the French government declare British beef unsafe in 1999,
the eat British Beef campaign starts. Every single shop and pub in
the Devon town of Hatherington stops selling French goods in a
show of solidarity with the community's farmers. However, sales of
beef still plummet

2000

2003 The government promotes the idea that adults need to eat five
portions of fruit and vegetables a day. The Department of Health
five-a-day campaign includes work with schools and local groups.

2003 The Department of Health establishes Breastfeeding awareness
week. Rates of breastfeeding in England of Wales have increased
from 64% in 1990 to 70% in 2000 and the government hope to
increase this further. However, press coverage reflected that not all
mothers appreciate being told what to do.

85

http://www.kingston.ac.uk/cusp/Publications/CuspReview/AIDS.htm

86

Green Claims Code: is it working? 1999 The National Consumer Council


Appendix 2: Bibliography

Alibhai-Brown, Y. (1999). True Colours: Public Attitudes to
Multiculturalism and the Role of the Government. London, IPPR.
Andreason, A. (1995). Marketing Social Change: Changing Behavior to
Promote Health, Social Development, and the Environment, Jossey
Bass Wiley.
Page 54
Beck, D. (1995). Ecological Politics in an Age of Risk. London, Polity Press.
Bentley, M. (2000). Consumer trends and expectations: An international
survey focusing on environmental impacts. UNEP Industry and
Environment Review. 23: p9-11.
Burningham, K and Thrush, D, Rainforests are a long way from here: The
environmental concerns of disadvantaged groups, 2001, Joseph
Rowntree Foundation
Blaza A, H. H., Horrax S (2002). It's your choice: influencing more
sustainable patterns of consumption in the UK, Imperial College
London and UNED UK.
Buck, S. (2002). The True Cost of Cutting Adspend. Oxford, World
Advertising Reseach Center.
Calder, F. (2003, forthcoming) The climate change communications project:
a proposal for a new campaign to engage the public in the
development of a low-carbon future for the UK
Christie, I. & Warburton D (2001). From Here to Sustainability: Politics in
the Real World. London, Earthscan
Cowe, R., and Williams S. (2000). Where are the ethical consumers?, The
Co-operative Bank.
Ecotec (2001). A survey of environmental claims and declarations made on
consumer products. Birmingham, Ecotec.
Elliot, M. L. P. (1984). "Improving Community Acceptance of Hazardous
Waste Facilities through Alternative Systems of Mitigating and
Managing Risk." Hazardous Waste 1: 397-410.
Emanuel, R (2000) The Anatomy of Buzz: Using Invisible Networks to
Spread the Word About Your Product, HarperCollins Business
Eurobarometer (2002). The attitude of Europeans towards the environment.
Brussels, European Commission.
Fenton Communications (2001). Now Hear This; The Nine Laws of
Successful Advocacy Communications. Washington.
Fischer, F. (2002). Citizens, Experts and the Environment. Durham, USA,
Duke University Press.
Flisi, C. (2001). Strange Bedfellows: Advertising and the Green Consumer.
International Herald Tribune.

Page 55
Gibb, E. (2003). Publicity: From persuasion to participation. London,
Demos.
Gordon, W. (2002). Brand green: Mainstream or forever niche? London,
Green Alliance.
Harkin, J. (2001). Brand Name Bullies Fight Back with Greenwashed PR.
New Statesman.
Jackson, T. (2003). Models of Mammon - a cross disciplinary survey in
pursuit of the 'sustainable consumer'. EPUK conference, Aberdeen.
Jackson, T. and L. Michaelis (2003). Policies for Sustainable Consumption.
London, Sustainable Development Commission.
Opinion Leader Research (2003). The New Persuaders: the changing nature
of influence. London, Opinion Leader Research.
National Consumer Council (1999). The Green Claims Code: Is it working?
Part I: results of the monitoring surveys in the code's first year.
London, National Consumer Council.
Richardson, D. (1997). The politics of sustainable development. The Politics
of Sustainable Development: Theory, policy and practice within the
European Union. Baker, Routledge.
Ryan, P. C. (2002). Sustainable Consumption: A Global Status Report,
UNEP.
The Co-operative Bank (2002). The Ethical Purchasing Index 2002.
Manchester.

Collins, J. Thomas, G., Willis, R. & Wilsdon, J. (2004) - Carrots, Sticks and Sermons. Demos, London.

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